TY - GEN
T1 - The quest to replace passwords
T2 - 33rd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, S and P 2012
AU - Bonneau, Joseph
AU - Herley, Cormac
AU - Van Oorschot, Paul C.
AU - Stajano, Frank
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - We evaluate two decades of proposals to replace text passwords for general-purpose user authentication on the web using a broad set of twenty-five usability, deployability and security benefits that an ideal scheme might provide. The scope of proposals we survey is also extensive, including password management software, federated login protocols, graphical password schemes, cognitive authentication schemes, one-time passwords, hardware tokens, phone-aided schemes and biometrics. Our comprehensive approach leads to key insights about the difficulty of replacing passwords. Not only does no known scheme come close to providing all desired benefits: none even retains the full set of benefits that legacy passwords already provide. In particular, there is a wide range from schemes offering minor security benefits beyond legacy passwords, to those offering significant security benefits in return for being more costly to deploy or more difficult to use. We conclude that many academic proposals have failed to gain traction because researchers rarely consider a sufficiently wide range of real-world constraints. Beyond our analysis of current schemes, our framework provides an evaluation methodology and benchmark for future web authentication proposals.
AB - We evaluate two decades of proposals to replace text passwords for general-purpose user authentication on the web using a broad set of twenty-five usability, deployability and security benefits that an ideal scheme might provide. The scope of proposals we survey is also extensive, including password management software, federated login protocols, graphical password schemes, cognitive authentication schemes, one-time passwords, hardware tokens, phone-aided schemes and biometrics. Our comprehensive approach leads to key insights about the difficulty of replacing passwords. Not only does no known scheme come close to providing all desired benefits: none even retains the full set of benefits that legacy passwords already provide. In particular, there is a wide range from schemes offering minor security benefits beyond legacy passwords, to those offering significant security benefits in return for being more costly to deploy or more difficult to use. We conclude that many academic proposals have failed to gain traction because researchers rarely consider a sufficiently wide range of real-world constraints. Beyond our analysis of current schemes, our framework provides an evaluation methodology and benchmark for future web authentication proposals.
KW - authentication
KW - computer security
KW - deployability
KW - economics
KW - human computer interaction
KW - security and usability
KW - software engineering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878353718&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84878353718&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/SP.2012.44
DO - 10.1109/SP.2012.44
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84878353718
SN - 9780769546810
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
SP - 553
EP - 567
BT - Proceedings - 2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, S and P 2012
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Y2 - 21 May 2012 through 23 May 2012
ER -